TIME 2014/ Pull of the Moon: Ai Weiwei, Bert Benally, & xRez Studio

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TIME 2014/ Pull of the Moon is an experimental immersive film based on the 2014 collaboration of renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and Navajo artist Bert Benally’s ephemeral land art performance in rural New Mexico in June 2014. The film digitally recreates the remote performance site of Coyote Canyon by utilizing cutting edge CGI techniques of aerial drone mapping, photogrammetry, and gigapixel panoramic techniques. In the film, the union of Weiwei and Benally’s artwork is set into a singular moment in the digital landscape, celebrating and recreating the performance on a moonlit night. The film was screened on NM Arts’s new 50′ dome theater at a public event at The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, NM in August 2014 and at Art Basel in Miami, FL in Dec 2014. The work has additionally been created for viewing spherically in VR using an Oculus Rift and Gear VR, as well as deployed as an interactive installation at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe during the fall of 2014. The film was commissioned by New Mexico Arts and the Skylark Foundation through arts curator Eileen Braziel.